I drive around an' park the car on the opposite side of the street. Then I go over an' ring a night bell that I find. About five minutes later he opens the door himself.
"Are you Metts?" I ask him.
He says yes an' what do I want. I show him my badge.
"My name's Caution," I say.
He grins.
"Come in," he says. "I heard about you. I had a line through the Governor's Office that probably you'd be handlin' this thing. I suppose you'r down here about that phoney Registered Dollar Bond business."
"You said it"' I tell him.
I go in after this guy an' we go to a nice room on the ground floor where he gives me a big chair an' a shot of very good bourbon. Then he sits down an' waits. is an intelligent lookin' cuss, with a long thin face an' a big nose. I reckon I ain't goin' to have any trouble with him.
"Well, chief," I tell him. 'I don't want to be I nuisance to you around here. I just want to get this job I'm doin' finished as soon as I can an' scram out of it. The co-ope~an.on I want from you aia''t muck It is juwnis. When' this counterfeit Dollar Bond bt*itw broke an' I was elected to handle it, I got through an' pg t guy in tile 'G' Office at Los Angeles put over here workin' under cover, name of Sagers. He's been working out at tbe Haciwda Altmira as a dancin' partner.
"I blew in tonight with a phoney tale about his comm' into some money so as to relieve him, but somebody got wise to the job. When I went back to this dump later I found his body in a sack in the ice safe Some guy had given him the heat in five places. He's still there. I'm reportin' that to you officially because a murder around here is your job; but I don't want you to do anythin' about it yet. I'll advise Washington that Sagers is due to have his name put on the memorial tablet at headquarters, an' we'll just leave it like that for the time being, because if you start gumshoein' around tryin' to find out who bumped him off we're just goin' to get nowhere. OK?"
He nods his head.
"That looks like sense to me," he says. "That's OK by me. I'll get out an official report as from you on Sagers' death, an' we'll file it and sit on it till you say go."
"Swell, Chief," I told him. "Now the other thing is this. Who was the guy who sent the information through to Washington about that Dollar Bond bein' phoney? Was it you? If it was where did you get your information from? Was it the bank manager? How did it happen?"
He pours himself out a drink.
"I'll tell you," he says. "I got it from the bank manager. When this Aymes woman came out here, she opens a checking account at the bank. The bank manager, who is an old friend of mine, told me she opened this account with 2000 dollars: She draws on this checking account until there is only ten dollars in it, and then one day she blows down to the bank an' sticks a five thousand US Registered Dollar Bond over the counter to the receivin' teller an' asks him to pay it into her account
"Well, that bond is a nice piece of printin'. He looks at it an' it looks good to him, and it is only an hour afterwards when the manager is havin' a look at it that he twigs it is counterfeit.
"He rings up Mrs Aymes an' tells her that the bond is as phoney as hell. She just seems a little bit surprised, that's all, an' accordin' to him she didn't seem to take very much interest. She says OK an' she hangs up. Next day he writes her a line an' says he'll be glad if she'll look in at the bank.
"She blows in. Then he tells her that this business is a little bit more serious than she might think. He tells her that he has got to report that a counterfeit bond has been paid into his bank, an' that the best thing that she can do will be to tell him just where she got the bond from an' all about it. She says OK she got the bond from her husband an' she got it with a packet of 200,000 dollars' worth of US Registered Dollar Bonds that he bought in New York for good money an' gave to her.
"When the manager asks where he bought 'em, she says he bought 'em from the bank, an' when the manager says that it's not easy to believe that because banks don't sell counterfeit bonds, she says that's as maybe but that's all she knows. With that she gets up and is just about to go out when he asks her where her husband is as he reckons that somebody will be wantin' to ask him some questions.
"She turns round an' she smiles a little bit, an' she says she reckons it will be durn difficult to ask her husband questions because he committed suicide in New York on the 12th January this year. Naturally this staggers the manager for a bit, but he says to her that she ought to be good an' careful because it is a federal offence to change bonds that are screwy, an' that he reckons she had better bring the rest down to see what they look like.
"So she drives off an' she comes back with the rest of this stuff - 195 thousand dollars' worth of Registered Dollar Bonds in denominations of fifty thousand, twenty thousand, ten thousand, five thousand, an' one thousand dollars, with the usual interest bearing coupons that go with them.
"In the meantime Krat, the manager, has been on to me about this an' after she has left the stuff at the bank, I go over an' look at it. The whole durn lot is counterfeit, but the job has been done so well that you have to have one helluva look before you see it.
"Well, there is the story. The same day I put the report through to the State. I suppose they pass it on to Washington an' you get the job. What are you goin' to do? Do you think she was in on this game? Do you think that she an' this husband of hers got this stuff made before he killed himself?"
"I wouldn't know, Chief," I say. "Nothing matches up in this deal. I've handled some screwy jobs in my time, but I don't think I've ever got one quite like this, an' maybe it won't be so hot for her before I am through with it."
"One of them interestin' things, huh?" he says.
"Yeah," I tell him. "An' how! It's one of them funny ones - you know, nothin' matches up, but as a case it's durned interestin'. Here's how it goes:
"This guy Granworth Aymes an' the dame Henrietta Aymes have been married about six years. He is a gambler. He plays the market an' sometimes he makes plenty dough an' sometimes he's scrabbin' around for the rent. They do themselves pretty well though; they live in the Claribel Apartments, New York, an' they are heavy spenders an' put up a good front. They are supposed to be plenty happy too, in fact this Claribel Apartments dump is just another little love nest, an' you know how they usually end up?
"OK. Well, at the end of last year this Granworth Aymes gets a hot tip. He plays it up well an' believe it or not the deal comes off. He muscles in on a big stock-pushin' racket an' he walks out of it with a quarter of a million dollars profit. The boy is now in the money.
"Well, it looks like he has a meeting with himself an' he comes to the conclusion that he's had enough of bein' up an' down on the market an' for once he is goin' to be a sensible guy an' salt down some of the profits. So he pays fifty thousand dollars into his checkin' account at the bank and with the other two hundred thousand bucks he buys himself that much worth of US Registered Dollar Bonds. He brings 'em along to his downtown office an' he makes 'em up into a parcel an' seals it down an' he calls his lawyer on the telephone an' tells him to legally transfer the Dollar Bonds to his wife Henrietta Aymes. He says that if it's her money then they'll be all right in the future because she is a careful dame, an' will stick to the dough an' not let him go jazzin' it around.
"The lawyer guy gets a bit of a shock at hearin' Granworth talk like this, but he is pleased that he is gettin' some sense, an' he draws up a deed of gift to Henrietta Aymes an' the deed is registered an' the lawyer then hands the bonds over to Henrietta, an' the bonds he handed over was OK, they wasn't phoney, they was the real stuff.